Commons Gets A New Look

The University Student Commons gets remodeled to help better serve the large student crowds.

By: Santia Nance

Thousands of students have returned from winter break to discover that the University Student Commons has been newly renovated.

“I walked in thinking ‘wow, they really did this!’” said Virginia Commonwealth junior Emily Brutout as she looked at the new Commons convenience store.

Construction in the Commons started at the beginning of the fall semester. The $200,000 project mostly involved the front door; which was widened, and the many food services throughout the building.

Louise Kapelewski, marketing manager of the VCU Dining Services, wanted to make the crowds more manageable.

“We recognized that the previous space in which Subway, Bene Pizza and Commons Convenience were located was very small for the number of customers in the space,” she said.

The smallest, most used area Subway, offers subs for meal swipes on weekends. It is the biggest food crowd drawn in the Commons and where the space issue started.

“I’ve had to wait over an hour before,” said another student, John Monroe, “and usually the service was bad because they were in a rush!”

Kapelewski said that the overall flow of traffic needed to be revised.

“Subway’s line backed up into the cashier’s lines, all three venues utilized only two registers – the space simply couldn’t hold the number of people that wanted to use it,” she said.

The driving forces of this decision was the comments and feedback that the Dining Services had received over the last two years.

Taylor Allen, a member of the VCU Monroe Park Campus Student Government Association, claims they got the job done.

“We had gotten a lot of complaints both about the doors and how crowded the commons food area was, so we wrote up a bill to change them both, and voila!” she said.

Those student comments and finding the space to put the convenience store was what really put the entire project in motion and the actual transition took about four months.

Construction began with Bene Pizza moving next to Chick-fila, and the construction of the convenience store, which is where the E2 store used to be before it went out of business.

Then in October, the plan to build a second Subway line began. Also, the construction for the door started, causing students to take an alternate route into the commons for a couple months.
Finally on Jan 5, 2009, the commons opened all of the new facilities to the public.

“So far we have received excited comments from students and the SGA. They greatly appreciate the space that is now available for moving between venues and meeting with friends or classmates,” Kapelewski says.

Student, Syed Moosvi was relieved when he saw the door. “Most students have to go through that door every morning, and it’s so much easier now!”

Monroe agrees. “It was an over all good change, and it really needed to happen.”

In the future, the VCU Dining Service hopes to make it even easier by re-designing the Larrick Student Center on MCV campus.